Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson is the author of The New York Times bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Warmth of Other Suns. A gifted storyteller, Wilkerson captivates audiences with the universal human story of migration and reinvention, as well as the enduring search for the American dream.

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About Isabel Wilkerson

Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson is author of The Warmth of Other Suns, the New York Times bestseller that tells the true story of three people who made the decision of their lives during the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction, the Lynton History Prize from Harvard and Columbia universities, the Stephen Ambrose Oral History Prize and was shortlisted for both the Pen-Galbraith Literary Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Wilkerson is a gifted and passionate speaker who has addressed the topics of migration, social justice, urban affairs, and 20th century history at more than 100 universities across the United States and in Europe and Asia. She has appeared on national programs such as CBS’s 60 Minutes, PBS’s Charlie Rose, NPR’s Fresh Air, NBC’s Nightly News, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, and others.

The Warmth of Other Suns became a New York Times and national bestseller. It was named to more than 30 Best of the Year lists, including The New York Times‘ 10 Best Books of the Year, Amazon’s 5 Best Books of the Year, and Best of the Year lists in The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, among others. It made national news when President Obama chose the book for summer reading in 2011. In 2012, The New York Times Magazine named The Warmth of Other Suns to its list of the best nonfiction books of all time.

Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for her work as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times in 1994, making her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African-American to win for individual reporting in the history of American journalism. She has lectured on narrative writing at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and has served as professor of journalism at Princeton University, Emory University and Boston University. Her work has garnered seven honorary degrees, most recently from Bates College and Southern Methodist University.

Wilkerson spent 15 years working on The Warmth of Other Suns, interviewing more than 1,200 people to tell what she calls one of the greatest underreported stories of the 20th Century.

Speaking Topics

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

The Great Migration: The Road from Civil War to Civil Rights

Wanting Something Better: The Universality of Migration

In the Shadow of Jim Crow: The Great Migration and the Making of Modern America

The Intimate Epic: A Humanistic Approach to History and Storytelling

Migration, Reinvention and the Search for Identity in the American Narrative

Video

Praise for Isabel Wilkerson

Ms. Wilkerson was terrific; she was great with the students and her lecture moved and connected with the lecture audience in a way that we have rarely seen. She talked seriously about serious matters in a way that was illuminating and thought provoking – she provided vocabulary that others will use as they continue the conversation within their own groups. She was warm, gracious, and willing to be helpful and extend herself to others. It was one of the more racially mixed audiences as well, which was one of our goal. The dinner guests enjoyed the opportunity to talk with her – everyone associated with her appearances here felt privileged.

—University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis, MN

The Morehouse campus is simply buzzing from Isabel’s lecture. Students, faculty, staff, and administrators all attended and were impressed not only by her extensive research but also by her kindness and humility. She reminded us all that the push for freedom continued long after slavery.

—Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA

It was a tremendous joy to host Isabel Wilkerson. Our campus family was so happy to have met her and to hear her speak. Everyone was personally touched by her body of work in a unique and special way. It will be an event that we will cherish in our memories for a long time – and I cannot wait to share with friends and members of my family.

—Framingham State University, Framingham, MA

Ms. Wilkerson’s ability to connect with our audience was instantaneous and we were transfixed and moved by the stories of courage she shared with us. Our audience was moved and uplifted and our event was an overwhelming success.

—YWCA McLean County, Bloomington, IL

Her program was phenomenal, without a doubt the best I have attended in my nearly 16 years working for this library.

—Forsyth County Public Library, Winston-Salem, NC

Isabel Wilkerson was perfect for the Oakland Public Library’s National Library Week Author Event. She attracted more than 300 people to the event and her presentation kept the crowd in thrall.

—Oakland Public Library, Oakland, CA

Praise for The Warmth of Other Suns

Profound, necessary and an absolute delight to read.

— Toni Morrison

I love this book. It’s one of the most memorable books I’ve ever read or ever owned...proudly owned. Anyone interested in the how and why of American history should pick up this wonderful book. From its very beginning, the United States has had as a principle subtheme: that of race. And in this masterful work, Isabel Wilkerson weaves together the intimate stories of three different people and makes them universal. Through oral history, thoughtful analysis, and her own experience, Wilkerson tells one of the great untold stories of American history.

— Ken Burns, Filmmaker

Not since Alex Haley’s Roots has there been a history of equal literary quality where the writing surmounts the rhythmic soul of fiction, where the writer’s voice sings a song of redemptive glory as true as Faulkner’s southern cantatas

—The San Francisco Examiner

The Warmth of Other Suns is epic in its reach and in its structure. Told in a voice that echoes the magic cadences of Toni Morrison or the folk wisdom of Zora Neale Hurston’s collected oral histories, Wilkerson’s book pulls not just the expanse of the migration into focus but its overall impact on politics, literature, music, sports — in the nation and the world…. What she’s done with these oral histories is stow memory in amber.

—Los Angeles Times

Wilkerson has created a brilliant and innovative paradox: the intimate epic. At its smallest scale, this towering work rests on a trio of unforgettable biographies, lives as humble as they were heroic… In different decades and for different reasons they headed north and west, along with millions of fellow travelers. . . In powerful, lyrical prose that combines the historian’s rigor with the novelist’s empathy, Wilkerson’s book changes our understanding of the Great Migration and indeed of the modern United States.

— Judges, The Mark Lynton History Prize, Columbia University and Harvard University

Featured Title

The Warmth of Other Suns

"...a brilliant and stirring epic. Ms. Wilkerson does for the Great Migration what John Steinbeck did for the Okies in his masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath; she humanizes history."—The Wall Street Journal